Vocable Code

Vocable code examines gender gaps in computer coding and digital culture. Through collecting voices and statements from others that help to complete the sentence that begins: “Queer is…”, the work is computationally and poetically composed where the texts and voices are repeated and disrupted by mathematical chaos, creating a dynamic audio-visual literature. Behind the executed web interface, the source code is deliberately written as a piece of Codework that explores the tension between computational constraints and language poetry. Indeed, the constraints regarding not only incorporating computer syntaxes, structures and functions, but also the resistance of binary logics. From the invention of digital computers to contemporary computation, the design of digital computers, programming languages and algorithmic decisions are technically structured in the spirit of absolute logic without any ambiguity. This binary computational thinking is influential and powerful as it promotes a particular style of writing and thinking as binary: on or off, true or false, yes or no, something or nothing which is ideally nothing in between, or nothing can be undecided, or nothing as non-binary. In view of this, writing Vocable (source) code is an attempt to think through the cultural implications and gaps of binary logic by avoiding binary 0 or 1, a single x or y, and a single operator with < or > as informed by the feminist programming language C+=. Considering voices, constraints and code naming, I consider Vocable code as a piece of queer e-lit, which is a constant unsettling and questioning on the binary thinking, gap and logic, both culturally and technically.